By
Adam Goodman
August 23, 2019 at 5:00 am ET
It’s right before our eyes yet we’re all blinded to its possibility.
It reflects the heart, and begs the head to catch up.
And, it should scare the living daylights out of Democrats clamoring for change but fearing four more years of Trumpian rule.
Bernie Sanders, written off countless times as too old, too liberal, too out there, now has a soulmate to help catapult him — and her — to the winner-take-all finale.
Elizabeth Warren is the best bet when it comes to his chances, and hers, of being asked to the big dance.
In a political thesaurus, Warren is a synonym for Sanders, and Sanders for Warren.
Rumpled but rarely rattled, Sanders is the loner who commands a legion of believers wanting to overthrow the system and everyone in it.
Warren, highly educated and highly energized, is taking aim at “billionaires, bigots and bankers” as the self-professed champion of America’s forgotten middle class.
They complement and channel each other, with do-or-die prescriptions that put “Big Brother” bureaucrats in charge of our economy and freedoms.
$20 trillion+ for Medicare-for-all and private insurance for none.
$93 trillion for a “Green New Deal” that rewards people for not working.
Trillions in higher business taxes and trillions more in reparations for every person dealt an unfair hand over the past two centuries.
All this before you add what we must already pay for everything from national defense and emergency response, to Social Security and spiraling interest on the $22-trillion national debt.
Ah, but that’s the mind talking.
Bernie and Elizabeth are gunning for the rabid, not the rational, and they’re scoring, even if their credo would bleed Americans’ bank accounts.
The most recent Democrat primary polls, which always undercount Sanders’ army of irregular voters, show Sanders/Warren combined are not only gaining on Joe Biden but passing him.
They project authenticity; Joe displays uncertainty. They embrace tomorrow; Joe’s tethered to the past. They emotionally connect; Joe intellectually pleads. And, together, Sanders and Warren represent the power of the 2016 playbook, taking on the system with the rich as their whipping post, Wall Street as their villain, and stopping the President as their mission.
Biden? He epitomizes the system.
Sanders and Warren could prove unstoppable in their march to the nomination derby if they formally align to win it. The problem is they are in each other’s way. If they join forces, watch out.
A Sanders/Warren – or a Warren/Sanders ticket – would be heralded as a team of prophets leading Democrats down a path to populist redemption.
Democrats won’t be the only ones cheering. Team Trump will be cheering just as loudly albeit for different reasons.
Sanders/Warren would have to sell America to go all-in on their vision. That vision means massive spending on a scale we’ve never seen creating more debt that the next generation can’t possibly repay. Good luck with that.
They’ve even taunted us to have the “guts” to have the conversation.
The president will welcome that conversation.
Trump is one of the only incumbents in history who can credibly run as an outsider who wants to change the system, not defend it.
He wants to “keep America great” with secure borders; they would make America stress with illegals pouring over those borders.
And despite their oratorical skills, Sanders and Warren would be taking on the greatest reality show President in history.
For sheer entertainment, America will hunger for this show. The ratings will be off the chart, and the conventions off the rails. But when that’s over, the nation will learn how Sanders and Warren are the nightmare … and Donald Trump the wake-up call.
Adam Goodman is a veteran political consultant and media strategist, frequent Cable TV commentator and Edward R. Murrow Senior Fellow at Tufts University.
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